sing me a song of a lass that is gone
by shadesunrider13
Summary: Say, could that lass be I? Seasons and years after the battle for Salamandastron, a Dibbun asks Mara about her father. Part 7 of Shifting the Sun: Tales from Salamandastron.


Mara grew up surrounded by things untouched by time. The great western sea, Salamandastron perched at the very edge of it, sand and rock and the rough-hewn stone of the mountain's halls. She knew nothing of war or death. It seemed to her then that all she loved would be eternal, as she would be. She saw joy and knowledge and experience and new and wonderful things in the long expanse of her life laid out before her. She never knew what a heavy burden a long life could be.

She has been mother to generations of children as Redwall Abbey's Badger Mother. The children she cared for when she was little more than a child herself – she's raised their children, then their grand-children, and then their great-grandchildren. Mara has loved them, nurtured them, cherished them. And she's buried every last one of them. Pikkle is dead. Samkim and Arula are dead. Even Urthwyte and Loambudd, long-lived even as she is, must be gone by now. Of all those who fought to wrest Salamandastron from Ferahgo the Assassin's dread clutches, she is the last. When she journeys to the Dark Forest, the passage of her friends and family from life into legend will be complete.

That time is closer than ever. But every morning she awakens, her eyes still bright, her ears sharp, her mind as quick and flexible as ever, she's reminded that it's still far away.

"Mara Mum?"

Mara looks up from the empty scroll, from the quill sitting unused in her paw, to find her newest charge standing framed in the half-open door. She sighs and lays the quill down. "What is it, Dawnstripe?"

In Mara's many seasons here, she's looked after orphan mice, voles, squirrels, hares, otters, and moles – even a sparrow fallen from the growing colony in the Abbey's upper reaches. But she's never tended to one of her own kind. The wood squirrel who brought the infant badger in wanted her to be named Dawn, for she was found just as the sun began to rise. Mara took the suggestion, but added her own twist – for as she cradled the child, dried its tears, she began to think of Urthstripe, all those years ago, caring for her. So Dawn became Dawnstripe, and no one but Mara knows the reason for the change.

Or at least she thinks she does. She can't tell if it's meant as an honor to her father, an apology for never calling him so in life, a plea for clemency, an attempt to tell him that she understands, she understands it all now. And what does it matter, the exact part and parcel of her reasoning? She buried him ages ago; she'll see him soon enough.

Dawnstripe sidles into the room sideways. "I had a bad dream," she says. "I think – I think it was about my father."

Mara leans forward in her chair, feeling an ache in her back that wasn't there when she woke up this morning. Rocks and rivers, she's getting old. "What was it? You can tell me if you wish."

Mara holds her arms open, and after a little hesitation, Dawnstripe climbs into her lap. She wraps her arms around the child, tight enough for security but loose enough that she won't feel trapped. Dawnstripe's heart is still hammering, and Mara's own twinges in sympathy. She rocks Dawnstripe slowly back and forth. "You are safe here, I swear it."

"I know." Dawnstripe sniffles. "It was nothing, really. I just – we were gathering mushrooms in the wood, like we always do, and then I heard Da yelling and something else snarling and then – then –"

"What?" Mara asks.

"Then all of a sudden he wasn't yelling anymore." Dawnstripe curls up even tighter. "He was screaming."

Unlike when Mara herself was a foundling, there is no ambiguity about the manner in which Dawnstripe became an orphan. The squirrel who found her found her beside her father's body, weeping and begging him to awaken. A dogfox's corpse lay beside the badger's. Her father died rescuing her. When Dawnstripe's older, that might bring some comfort, to know that she was loved so deeply. Now it's just fuel for her nightmares.

Dawnstripe lets out a thin little sob. "He's dead, isn't he?"

"Yes," Mara says. Something she learned about raising children from Urthstripe; it's better to tell a truth that the child will abhor than a lie they will like. "I know that's hard to think about right now."

"I miss him so much it hurts," Dawnstripe says. A softer sob sneaks out of her mouth. "Will it ever hurt less?"

"No," Mara says, smoothing out the child's headstripes, "but it becomes easier to bear. It did so for me."

It's more than she meant to say, but it stirs something in the child. Dawnstripe wriggles in her arms, peers up into her face. "You had a Da like mine?"

"I had a father, yes," Mara says, because there's about as much similarity between a mouse and a rat as there is between Lord Urthstripe the Strong and a mushroom gatherer in Mossflower wood.

"Did someone kill him too?"

Mara shifts in her seat. "It was a long time ago," she says.

"Do you miss him still?" Dawnstripe asks.

There's a new ache in Mara's chest, familiar and nostalgic and almost as sharp as the day it arrived. "Every day," she answers. "But it was different for me than it will be for you."

"Why?" When Mara can't answer, Dawnstripe pipes up with another question. "What happened to him?"

All Mara has to do is close her eyes, and she's there again. Salamandastron on the shores of the western sea, its smooth stone halls. The happy chatter of the Long Patrol hares at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the comforting heartbeat sound of Urthstripe's hammer at the forge, crafting armor and weapons and every kind of thing Mara can imagine. She didn't know it as such then, but her childhood at Salamandastron was a happy one. If only she'd known how little time she'd had. If only she'd know that it wouldn't last forever.

Mara resettles Dawnstripe on her lap. "It's a long story," she says. "Are you sure you don't want to try going back to sleep now?"

"I'm not tired," Dawnstripe says. "Tell me about your father."

So Mara tells her about Urthstripe, who she was named for. Urthstripe, who raised Mara to be strong and proud and to think for herself and to stand up for creatures who can't stand up for themselves. Urthstripe who was stubborn and hardheaded, who couldn't back down from a fight, who had a hard time admitting he was wrong. Urthstripe, who loved Mara like a daughter, who would have done anything for her. Who would have done anything to protect good creatures from evil ones.

Urthstripe, who died without Mara telling him that he was not just her guardian, but her father.

Her old friends slip into the story like friendly ghosts. Pikkle and Arula and Samkim, Nordo and Logalog and the Deepcoiler, Loambudd and Urthwyte and Big Oxeye and Sergeant Sapwood and Moonpaw All long gone to the Dark Forest, but when she speaks of their courage, their exploits, she feels them draw closer. Their presence warms her heart, softens the aches in her old bones. She's older now than Urthstripe ever got to be. She has a thousand thousand stories, one for every white hair in her once-black stripes, but this is the one that matters to her most. This is the story of where she comes from. This is the story of who she, Mara of Salamandastron, Mara, Badger Mother of Redwall, Mara-Mum to dozens upon dozens of younglings, is. Everything she is was shaped by Salamandastron.

She's a citizen of Redwall Abbey, first and foremost. But Salamandastron is her homeland, even after all these seasons. She finds herself missing it as she sits here. Missing the mountain, missing the sea. It's so quiet in the forest. She misses the sound of the waves.

Dawnstripe is sleeping soundly in her arms and the stars are beginning to fade in the sky by the time Mara finishes the tale. She's not sure the child heard the last third of the story, but that's all right. She'll tell it again in the days and seasons to come, so that their story – hers and Urthstripe's – goes on a little longer. Let there still be someone who tells the story, who can say that they heard it from Mara, who was there. Let them not become legend yet.

Dawnstripe will be the last child Mara raises. When she's grown, Mara will bid Redwall Abbey goodbye and follow a path she's walked only once before. She's lived most of a long life at Redwall, in Mossflower. But Mara wants to spend whatever time remains to her after this last child by the sea. She wants to be buried beside her father.

Mara carries Dawnstripe back to her bed, and as she climbs stairs and walks down hallways, she tests the strength in her limbs. She thinks she might have enough strength left, and enough time, for one more journey.


End file.
